"Out Of Africa" and Mozart's Music

I was listening to the second movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K.622 (among many other "romantic moments") one evening when I read Jade's blog entry Characters in Stories". I wasn't sure I understood what she tried to convey, but I recognized the last picture as Meryl Streep in "Out of Africa". What a coincidence! The Clarinet Concerto was featured in the movie. It is very gentle, compassionate, and melancholy. It melts into the movie so perfectly that I could almost believe that Mozart wrote it for a movie that came almost 200 years later.

Of course Mozart wrote it for someone else. This piece was Mozart's last complete instrumental work. It was commissioned by his friend Anton Stadler, the principal clarinetist in the Court orchestra in Vienna. Mozart wrote it in the autumn of 1791, two months before his death at the age of 35, thus this concerto is sometimes described as "autumnal", a "farewell to life". In fact, Mozart himself might not have known that his days were numbered. Only if he had lived longer, how many more masterpieces he would have composed!

The movie features other Mozart pieces including Piano Sonata in A Major, K.331 (Rondo Alla Turca), Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola and orchestra, K364, and three Divertimenti K.136, 137, 138. To hear excerpts of Mozart's music, go to this BBC webpage. To learn more about Mozart, I recommend the Teaching Company's Great Masters: Mozart—His Life and Music by Prof. Robert Greenberg. You can find the audio book in your local public library.

So now the Clarinet Concerto sounds to me forever associated with the movie "Out of Africa". Is this a good thing or a bad thing? What do you think, North Lab? I know you have been reading my blog. Surprise, surprise! The technology that enabled you to find my blog also led me to the discovery of who my readers are. Here in this blog entry dated June 11 I explained how I found it out, and why I didn't announce my embarking on blogging at the beginning. For your convenience, here is the google translation of my original entry in Chinese. Please excuse the imperfect translation by a machine.

I wrote "Thank you, my friends" because I knew you guys are reading it!

The following is just some records of your access to my blog:

xx.xx.1.56 - - [25/May/2006:07:56:05 US/Eastern]
xx.xx.2.69 - - [26/May/2006:16:36:10 US/Eastern]

xx.xx.1.56 - - [02/Jul/2006:13:23:01 US/Eastern]
xx.xx.2.69 - - [02/Jul/2006:15:06:02 US/Eastern]

Haha!